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25 August 2011

I'm currently tweaking a new template for this thing. The third-party layout I've had from the beginning has always had its share of slightly annoying formatting bugs; but recently they've been leading to increasing glitches, making the drafting and posting biz an aggravating -- and sometimes abortive -- process. Hopefully this will knock out some of those problems.

Also, I've never been sure of this three-column layout. Too crowded? Can't decide for sure.

So if you check back over the next several days and see things changing, or even see a few things going wonky, that's why. I expect it'll take some time and some adjustments until I have things to my satisfaction (or merely acceptable). It'll also involve rebuilding the various links lists, and I also anticipate that some older posts will probably go a bit askew due to the format shift. So I'll be fixing those, as well.

8 comments:

The 3-column layout is very clear and readable IMO. This has a really good sense of space (pace?) and clarity already. However, I've been thinking of changing mine and something came to mind: Does white text on black background make the content seem more 'aggressive' (or rather 'moody') - and is the opposite true if it's black text on white background? I have noticed I'm less drawn to certain blogs due to layout rather than content (tiny or coloured text, patterned backgrounds, too many gadgets are just some 'turn-offs').

Superficial, I know - but the whole 'click-on/click-off' aspect of the internet does encourage one to bypass measured judgements.

Thanks for the input, Wayne. I figure feedback from readers is useful in this respect.

Glitches aside, one concern about the three-column layout is that the flanking columns tend to "crush" the content -- espec in regards to imposing limitations on sizing images. I've never been fully satisfied w/ the overall visual 'flow' of the thing.

As far as what you're talking about in terms of text: There are Design 101 principles about such stuff. Traditionally, certain combination and offsets are considered better for 'text-heavy' content and extended reading. With white text on black or black on red, etc. -- things like that tend to tax the eyes and are only good for bold & short amounts of text.

However, these are rules that originated with print -- meaning that they don't necessarily apply to a computer screen. (Especially once you consider how the screen has a 'lightbox' effect on content -- particularly w/ text and images.)

But some things are still a definite no all around -- too many font changes, changes in font color, too much encroaching clutter. All of that just fatigues the reader's retinas & is too be avoided (or used very sparingly). And patterned backgrounds? Ugch. That's one of the biggest mistakes of all.

I think narrower 'body' columns like yours (as opposed to mine) 'flow' better. Like free mags etc. sometimes have one phat left to right column, and my eyes glaze over to early to read the whole thing.

There was a lot of 'patterned' sites about 10 years ago, with day-glo club flyer font eyeball bounce craziness (too many design alumni of nightclub scenes I reckon - had a few hassles with that 'kind' when doing zines etc. "Please bear in mind we would like people to read the fucking thing!"). Needless to say, most sites like that didn't last.

Yeah...that's what I was talking about. That sort f thing's good for adverts, flyers, attention-grabbers of that sort. But not desirable for other things.

Huh. I was going to load the new template today and start tweaking. And I believe the layout I'd chosen (see above) might be awfully close to the sort you're complaining about. I may have to hold off, run a couple of screengrabs past a few friends, and get a vote on it.

Not entirely sure why I'm bothering, honestly. I don't have the time or the means to build one from scratch (plus doing it that way often introduces even more bugs, once you introduce it to blogger's clunky platform). So I'm going about it as I did before: Getting a third-party template and doing lots of deletions & adjustments. But in the end, I'll probably be as equally "meh" about it as I am with this one. Shrug.

Nah that template looks fine. As you say, the plus is more image room. Although it does bug me how clunky blogger is (is wordpress better?). If you got a slow connection like mine it takes forever to do the most minor tweaks and some features just fail to show up sometimes (like when it's raining heavily!).